They Don't Make E3 Press Conferences Like They Used To

The 'E3 press conference' as an industry institution has been fading ever since Nintendo brilliantly broadcast their first E3 Nintendo Direct in 2012. What were they good for? Just how weird were they? Why did I keep going to them? I ponder these questions in this video.

E3 2019 will be the eighteenth E3 I attend, and I can’t help feeling sentimental whenever I hear the words 'E3 press conference'. Back when it took hours to download a two-minute game trailer, building a website, posting some blogs, and then draining my bank account to fly to Los Angeles felt like an efficient way to cut out the middlemen who stood between me and my selfish urge for fresh video game news.

Some of my best adult memories are of the shrill laughter my friends and I produced, right there, in person, when so-and-so awkwardly recited such-and-such corporate jargon from a teleprompter.

If we measure goodness in laughter, maybe the best day of my life was that day I got a free backpack at Nokia’s bizarre, disastrous N-Gage press event.

I can’t believe I made it through this whole video without talking about the N-Gage.

In closing: today is my 40th birthday. I have spent eighteen of my adult birthdays either being at E3, flying to E3 or getting ready to fly to E3. This year, I’m posting a video about E3.

Maybe I should take Reggie Fils-Aimé’s retirement from Nintendo as a sign that this fifth decade of my life is the one where I should stop going to E3.

After just this one more. Or maybe I should try to make it an even twenty.

If you enjoy this video, you could perhaps psych yourself up for the sort of weird stuff I’m planning for Kotaku Dot Com at E3 2019 by checking out this playlist of my videos from E3 2018. Sure, it’s literally last year’s news, though I like to think I at least possess an evergreen vocabulary.